Mayhew held Felicia’s chair. Once she’d settled, he claimed the third chair at the table.
Despite Flora’s overtly gentle and feminine appearance, Felicia knew her chaperon was shrewd and observant. Flora poured tea and chatted in amiable vein, professing her delight at the thought of Mayhew sketching the Hall. She confirmed Felicia’s expectation that there was no reason Mayhew couldn’t ply his pencil the following afternoon and approved of his choice of view.
Flora waited until Mayhew had sampled one of Cook’s lemon cakes and sipped his tea before leaning forward and declaring, “I have to confess, Mr. Mayhew, that I am quite impatient to see the sketches Felicia said you would bring to dazzle us.”
A faint flush stained Mayhew’s long cheeks. He shot Felicia a self-deprecating glance. “I wouldn’t describe my work as ‘dazzling,’ ma’am.” He set down his cup and reached into his pocket. “However, I have brought several of my sketches—of Ashampstead and of the river nearby. I hope you’ll recognize the view and approve of my poor talent.”
He withdrew a roll of paper about nine inches long that was wound about a thin wooden rod. Seeing Felicia look curiously at the roll, Mayhew explained, “I carry my sketches in this way so they don’t crease.”
“Ah. Of course.” Felicia watched while Mayhew unrolled several sheets of fine artist’s paper from the spool. When he handed the curling sheets to her, she eagerly took them. Flora quickly cleared a space on the table between her and Felicia, and Felicia laid the sketches down.
She and Flora stared, mesmerized by the pencil-and-ink sketches that had captured views with which they were both familiar with such accuracy and felicity that the scenes were not just instantly recognizable but the sketches somehow conveyed a sense of the atmosphere pertaining to each place. The sketch of Ashampstead village street on a market day was abustle with life, while the delicate sketch of the pool on the river Pang to the east of Hampstead Norreys invoked a sense of bucolic peace.
Once she’d looked her fill, Felicia glanced up and, across the table, met Mayhew’s eyes. “These are exquisite. You are, indeed, very talented.”
Somewhat to her surprise, Mayhew didn’t smile but lightly raised one shoulder, as if he remained unsure of his skill or was, for some reason, uncomfortable acknowledging it.
Looking again at the sketches, Felicia felt vindicated in having agreed to allow him to sketch the Hall; such an opportunity, dropped into her lap by Fate, shouldn’t be lightly passed up, and if it helped Mayhew continue and gain more confidence in his work, well and good.
“I admit,” she said, raising her gaze once more to Mayhew’s face, “to being intrigued to see what you make of the Hall, sir. It was a lucky chance that sent you our way.”
Flora added her compliments, too.
Mayhew blushed anew and, yet again, disclaimed—although with the evidence of his talent lying before Felicia and Flora, he might as well have saved his breath. Then, with all three of them transparently pleased with the outcome of Mayhew’s visit, they settled to finish their tea.
* * *
From the shadows of the woodland bordering the south lawn, Rand watched the trio on the terrace as they laughed, smiled, and chatted.
It wasn’t difficult to assess how Felicia—and Flora, who Rand considered a sensible and supportive lady—viewed Mayhew. They’d both relaxed and were smiling with genuine delight upon the supposed artist.
Although Rand had retreated to the workshop with William John after luncheon, he’d set Shields on guard by the stable. Shields had hurried around to the workshop to warn Rand that Mayhew had arrived, riding a rather poor-quality nag—Shields being the sort to notice such things.
Leaving William John muttering at his engine, Rand had climbed the stairs and confirmed that the door at the top was firmly shut. He’d waited behind the panel and had heard Mayhew arrive and speak with Johnson, then Felicia had come and taken Mayhew outside.
Rand had descended to the workshop and, assisted by Shields, had closed the large double doors. William John had noticed the light dimming. He’d blinked, then crossed to the wall and fiddled with a knob, setting the gaslights in the gantry above his workbench blazing. Then he’d returned to his invention, ignoring Rand and Shields and all else about him.
Rand had dismissed Shields, who had clattered back up the stairs and out via the front hall. Rand had counseled himself to patience, but hadn’t been able to squash the impulse to ease one of the big workshop doors open a fraction—just enough to peer out.
He’d glimpsed Felicia and the artist walking through the roses, then had watched Felicia lead the man down the lawn, until the pair had passed out of sight behind the kitchen garden.
That had given Rand an idea. He’d confirmed that William John had no intention of emerging from the workshop before the gong rang for dinner. With Felicia and Mayhew still screened by the walls of the kitchen garden, Rand had slipped out through the double doors. He’d shut them behind him, then swiftly circled the kitchen garden to the corner where he could see Felicia and Mayhew walking down the south lawn, their backs to him.
He’d walked quickly across the lawn and into the woodland that so helpfully surrounded the house.
From the cover of the trees, he’d watched Felicia and the artist stroll the lawns, eventually fetching up at a spot almost directly across from where Rand had been standing. After some discussion, apparently pleasing to both, they’d repaired to the terrace, where Flora was waiting with the teacups.
Mayhew had shown them some papers—presumably some of his sketches. Rand hadn’t been able to get a clear view of Felicia’s face, but from the expression on Flora’s, Mayhew’s sketches were very definitely worthy of admiration.
As the trio consumed their tea and cakes and conversed in pleasant vein, Rand shifted in the shadows and wondered if he was being overly paranoid. Or overly something else.
Could Mayhew simply be what he purported to be? A sketch artist whose works were published in the London News and who was eager to find new vistas to draw?
Certainly, Mayhew had shown no interest in the workshop doors, although given their location, they could easily be taken to be doors to a cellar for storing produce from the kitchen garden. Yet Rand wasn’t even sure Mayhew had noticed the doors; he’d seemed more interested in Felicia and, later, in the long views of the house.
As Rand watched, Mayhew made some comment, then collected his sketches. Felicia rose and went indoors; a moment later, she returned and resumed her seat. Presumably, Mayhew was leaving, and Felicia had gone to ask for his horse to be brought around.
Rand shifted, uncertain and faintly irritated. He tried to get a better sense of—a clearer insight into—the instincts that were so firmly insisting that Mayhew was a threat. Which instincts? And a threat to what?
Given his focus on the invention, he’d assumed the prickling tension had to do with that, warning him he should see Mayhew as a threat to the Throgmorton engine.
But what if it wasn’t that? What if his instincts were bristling because they saw Mayhew as a threat in another sense?
As a threat to Rand because of his fascination with Felicia Throgmorton.
Cloaked in the trees’ shadows, he wrestled with the realization that—almost without him being aware of it—that second option had become a possibility.
Just because he’d decided he wouldn’t think of finding a wife until after he’d established his position in the investing world didn’t mean Fate would fall in with his plans.
Concealed in the wood’s gloom, he watched as Mayhew rose, and Felicia got to her feet. With smiles and bows, Mayhew took his leave of the ladies, then walked back along the terrace and around the corner of the house to where his horse would be waiting in the forecourt.
Rand studied Felicia as she remained by the table, watching Mayhew depart; he couldn’t see her face.
Ran
d’s lips twisted, then he shook his head, made his way out of the trees, and strode for the workshop doors.
He could pretend all he liked, but the truth was that, regardless of whether Mayhew had any interest in the Throgmorton steam engine, Rand and his prickling instincts would still see the artist as a threat.
A different type of threat, yet a threat nonetheless.
As for which type of threat Mayhew actually represented...at that point, Rand didn’t know. He couldn’t even make an educated guess.
CHAPTER 5
As dusk turned to darkness outside the windows and the clocks throughout the house chimed for ten o’clock, Rand sat at the desk in his bedchamber and penned a letter to his half brother, Ryder, and Ryder’s wife, Mary.
The couple had known Rand had been on his way to visit them; not appearing and not sending word wasn’t an option.
Even if Ryder wasn’t inclined to worry unduly, Mary would fret, and then Ryder would act—most likely by asking questions in London—which wouldn’t be helpful. Aside from avoiding such an outcome, Rand wanted to make his excuses to his nephews and niece and assure the whole family that he would join them at Raventhorne Abbey as soon as the problems with the Throgmorton Steam-Powered Horseless Carriage were resolved.
As his nib softly scratched across the paper, Rand felt increasingly sure that he wouldn’t be free to visit the Abbey until after the twenty-second of the month—after the exhibition at which the invention was to be unveiled. Until then...he expected to be living on tenterhooks.
They had to meet that deadline and meet it successfully. Any alternative would harm him, his investors, the Throgmortons, and their household—it was as simple as that.
Not that he communicated any of his anxieties to Ryder and Mary. Forging his own path meant doing things himself, and while Ryder, as the Marquess of Raventhorne, possessed significant power, and Mary, as a Cynster, had her own brand of power, too, in the arena Rand had chosen as his own, that sort of power was, if not entirely impotent, then as near as made no odds.
Increasingly, these days, men like Rand were being judged by their achievements. One’s birth helped, but the achievements mattered more.
He reached the end of his missive, signed his name, then blotted the page. He folded the sheet, inscribed Ryder’s direction, and used the stick of wax supplied to seal the flap, pressing his signet ring to a melted blob, then waving the letter to cool the seal. That done, letter in hand, he turned down the lamp, rose—and froze, staring out of the window into the country dark.
Had he just glimpsed a figure drifting through the near-black shadows edging the lawn?
He stared, but could no longer see anything to suggest someone was out there. The figure—if figure there had been—had been moving southward. If there was someone there, they would now be out of his sight.
Rand frowned. Slowly tapping the letter against his fingertips, he stood looking through the window while he reviewed the reasons his mind might be playing tricks on him by imagining a figure flitting through the woods.
Despite his and, indeed, Felicia’s initial suspicions of Mayhew, they all—meaning Felicia, Flora, Johnson, Shields, and, reluctantly, Rand—had agreed that the man had shown no sign whatever of being anything other than what he purported to be—an artist keen on sketching the Hall.
They’d discussed the matter over the dinner table, then called in Johnson and Shields for their views of Mayhew. Johnson had served the Throgmortons for decades and was well aware of the threat to the family a seemingly innocent man might pose, and Shields, as a Londoner, had been born suspicious, yet neither man saw Mayhew as harboring any sinister intent.
Grudgingly, Rand had accepted that his heightened instincts were, in this case, heightened for another reason entirely—one that had nothing to do with any threat to the Throgmorton engine.
In accepting that...
He snorted softly and turned from the window. He opened the door and walked along the corridor into the gallery, then descended the stairs. A salver for letters for the post was sitting where he’d assumed one would be—on the side table in the front hall. He left his letter on the salver, on top of one written by either Felicia or Flora, judging by the delicate writing.
As he was about to turn away, his gaze fell on the door to the workshop. It was closed, and he’d checked the bar across the double doors on the lower level himself before he’d followed William John upstairs for dinner.
The workshop was secure. The invention was safe.
There was no danger to anyone—at least, not tonight.
Yet his nerves—his instincts—were still twitching.
His lips setting, Rand turned and went up the stairs.
Five minutes later, he settled in the bed, closed his eyes, and—somewhat to his surprise—fell instantly asleep.
* * *
A clanging commotion jerked Rand awake. The noise didn’t stop. Whatever it was continued to clatter and bang.
He leapt from the bed. As he grabbed his trousers, he glanced at the window—and, in the faint silvery light shed by a crescent moon, saw a man fleeing across the lawn to dive into the wood.
Cursing, Rand thrust his legs into his trousers and shoved his feet into his shoes. He shrugged on a shirt and headed for the door.
The clanging was slowing, but hadn’t ceased.
Still buttoning his shirt, he strode down the corridor—and saw Felicia, swathed in a silk wrapper and carrying a candlestick, in the gallery ahead of him.
He caught up with her as she started down the stairs. Going down three and four at a time, he waved at her. “Stay back!”
On reaching the hall tiles, he glanced over his shoulder—only to see her hurrying down.
She pinned him with a furious glare. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Cursing anew, this time under his breath, he turned and strode on. He hauled open the door to the workshop—the clanging had come from there, but had almost stopped, fading in a rather curious way.
All below him lay in inky darkness.
Tight-lipped, he swung around, seized one of the candles left on the hall table, lit the wick from the candle Felicia—her expression stoic, but concern leaping in her eyes—held steady. Then he turned once more to the workshop stairs.
“Wait!”
Rand looked around to see William John, the skirts of his dressing gown flying about him, a lighted candelabra in his hand, come hurrying down the stairs.
Johnson appeared behind his master, and Shields, Corby, and the two footmen came thundering down in their wake.
“It’s all right,” William John assured them all. “If they’d got through, the sound would have changed.”
“What was that racket?” Felicia asked.
William John grinned. “It’s an alarm Papa and I rigged up. It goes off if anyone tries to force the workshop doors.” He pushed past Rand and started down the workshop stairs. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Everyone clattered down the stairs, even Mrs. Makepeace, Cook, Mrs. Reilly, Mr. Reilly, and their four daughters—the maids of the house.
In the workshop, William John threw the switch that, with a buzzing hum, set the gaslights blazing. He stood back and surveyed the doors, then laughed. “It worked perfectly.” He pointed to a structure mounted on the wall high above the double doors. “See there? That’s our alarm.”
Rand had noticed the contraption earlier, but had assumed that, it being connected to the bars that secured the doors, it was merely some mechanism to lift them that was no longer in use. He came to stand beside William John and studied the mechanism of gears and levers, and what appeared to be several saucepans with their handles cut off. He debated asking how it worked, but feared William John would immediately demonstrate. If the noise had been so loud it had hauled the entire household from their beds, then in the stone-walled workshop, th
e cacophony would be horrendous. Nevertheless...he glanced at William John. “Very effective.” He had to give credit where it was due.
“It was, wasn’t it?” William John beamed. “I’ve been wanting to test it for an age, but there’s nothing like a true test of an invention to give one confidence.”
Rand shared a glance with Felicia, who had halted on the last stair, then dryly murmured, “Indeed.”
Felicia turned to the others, arrayed on the stairs behind her. “All’s well. Someone must have tried to force the doors, but no one got through.”
“Should we check outside?” Shields looked at Rand, as did both footmen.
Remembering the figure he’d seen fleeing into the night, Rand shook his head. “Whoever they were, they’ll be long gone.” And with so much woodland all around, their chances of catching anyone were slight. “But I believe we must treat this as the sign it unquestionably is. Someone knows of the Throgmorton engine and has, tonight, targeted it.”
Rand glanced at Felicia.
She nodded slightly, in support.
He looked at the others and went on, “We’ll need to mount a guard—despite the alarm mechanism, several men, acting together, might think to push past it and damage the engine before fleeing.” He focused on Shields, Corby, and the footmen. “We’ll need two men here at all times during the night.”
Corby exchanged a glance with Shields, then volunteered, “I’ll draw up a roster. We’ve Struthers and his lads from the stable, too, so it shouldn’t be too much for anyone.”
Rand nodded. “After the recent excitement, I’m sure we’ll be safe for the rest of the night. Whoever it was who tried to break in will need to regroup.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. All except William John, who was still admiring his successful alarm mechanism.